Wife of Huldremose

Wife of Huldremose

Detail of the upper body of the woman with the clearly severed humerus

The wife of Huldre Fen is a bog body from the v 2nd century. BC , which was found in 1879 in Huldremoor near Ramten in the Aarhus district in Denmark while cutting peat . It is in the care of the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen and has not yet been shown to the public. In recent years there have been plans to display the bog body in the Djursland Museum or in an exhibition in the Stenvad Mosebrug Center . Reconstructions of clothing can be found in various museums, u. a. inSilkeborg .

Find

On May 15, 1879, the unskilled worker Niels Hansen, who stabbed for the Ramten school teacher JV Nissen Torf , came across the remains of the corpse, which were about one meter below the surface. Hansen informed the archaeologically interested teacher, Nissen, who immediately stopped his work and excavated the archaeological find in the presence of the district bailiff from Grenå , a pharmacist and a police officer . For further examination, the body was taken to the barn of a nearby farm, where Nissen cleaned it with a scalpel. When undressing the corpse, it became clear that there was no recent crime and that it must be a historical find. The medical officer Steenberg wrote a report to the Royal Museum of Nordic Antiquities in Copenhagen and promised to send the clothes to the museum. Nissen had clothes washed and air dried. The garments apparently survived this procedure without being damaged. The body was coffed and buried in the cemetery of Ørum Church. The Copenhagen Museum telegraphed back and asked for the body to be transferred as well. Two days after the burial, the body was exhumed again and temporarily stored in the mortuary of the hospital in Grenå. On June 4, 1879, the find was then transferred to the museum in Copenhagen by steamboat . Location: 56 ° 26 '39.7 "  N , 10 ° 37' 50.1"  E Coordinates: 56 ° 26 '39.7 "  N , 10 ° 37' 50.1"  E

In 1907 the National Museum of Denmark gave the body to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Copenhagen for further study. The find was forgotten on both sides and was only found in a box under a table in 1976. Detailed medical examinations followed and the body was then returned to the National Museum of Denmark.

description

The preserved clothing of the wife of Huldremose with a skirt, two fur cloaks and a scarf

Back view

The dead woman lay on her back with her legs drawn up and was weighed down with a branch. The woman's body is almost completely intact. Before she died, the woman's right arm was almost severed by a blow. Around the shoulders, the woman wore a cloak of sheepskins to the head and neck a woolen scarf and the abdomen a woolen skirt. A woolen headband and a comb were found in the fur cloak. No other items of clothing, such as a blouse or shoes, were observed during the excavation. In order to be able to remove the fur cloak from the corpse, it was cut open. The scarf was also cut in two and only after it had been removed from the corpse did it become apparent that it was only closed with a bone needle under the left arm . An approximately 9 cm long, carefully decorated bone comb and two amber beads were found on her.

Findings

The wife of Huldremose was over 40 years old at the time of her death. The examination of the stomach contents revealed remains of rye and common spörgel , which suggests that the woman's last meal was possibly a bread or porridge . Traces of animal connective tissue were also found, suggesting meat in the food.

A radiocarbon dating revealed that she died in the 2nd century BC., And came to the moor. A sample from the corpse examined in the 1970s revealed a time of death between 200 BC and 350 AD. A more recent sample examined from clothing in 2007 was dated between 350 and 41 BC, this result being due to the newer investigation methods have a higher probability. The woman thus died in the Scandinavian pre-Roman Iron Age.

dress

The extraordinarily well-preserved pieces of clothing worn by Frau von Huldremose are an important document for the fashion of the first centuries BC in Northern Europe.

The woman wore two sheepskin cloaks over her shoulders. She wore the upper one with the fur side outwards and the lower one with the fur side inwards. The upper cape is 170 cm wide and 82 cm high and is sewn from five rectangular and two smaller triangular pieces of lambskin. The pieces of fur used are of different colors and were put together to create a decorative pattern. In addition, a border made of dark sheepskin is sewn onto the meat side in the upper area. The inner cape is only slightly smaller at 150 by 80 cm² and is sewn from seven to eight mostly rectangular pieces of lambskin and 22 smaller patches made from goat and deer skin. Both capes have an asymmetrical shape and a pronounced neckline. Around her neck and head she wore a plaid woolen scarf that was pinned together with a needle made of bird bone. The scarf has a length of 139 to 144 cm and a width of about 49 cm. A long skirt , with a woven check pattern, reached down to her ankles and was held together at the waist with a leather strap. She presumably held her hair together with a 75 cm long, woven wool ribbon. A blouse or other outer clothing has not been preserved - but this could have passed due to the special preservation conditions for organic material in the bog if it was made from plant fibers, e.g. B. linen existed. A tiny thread made of plant fiber and imprints of a fabric woven in a plain weave on the skin, found at an inspection in 2007, at least nourish the assumption of a plant-fiber undergarment, at least on the upper body.

A strontium isotope analysis of the wool fibers in clothing showed that the wool came from three different origins . According to this, some of the wool came from local production. The other two types of wool exhibited isotope patterns that are typical of sheep raised in northern Scandinavia. It is possible that this wool was traded as a raw material or as an already processed semi-finished product , such as spun yarn , from more distant regions.

literature

• Wijnand van der Sanden : Mummies from the moor. The prehistoric and protohistoric bog bodies from northwestern Europe . Batavian Lion International, Amsterdam 1996, ISBN 90-6707-416-0 (Dutch, original title: Vereeuwigd in het veen . Translated by Henning Stilke).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ kulturarv.dk
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Margarita Gleba, Ulla Mannering: A thread to the past: the Huldremose Woman revisited . In: Archaeological textiles newsletter . No. 50 , 2010, ISSN  0169-7331 , p. 32-37 (English).
3. ↑ Huldremosekvindens sidste måltid (Danish)
4. ^ The woman from Huldremose. (No longer available online.) National Museum of Denmark , archived from the original on December 28, 2011 ; accessed on November 30, 2011 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Karin Margarita Freia, Irene Skalsc, Margarita Glebaa, Henriette Lyngstrømb: The Huldremose Iron Age textiles, Denmark: an attempt to define their provenance applying the strontium isotope system . In: Journal of Archaeological Science . tape 36 , no. 9 , 2009, p. 1965–1971 , doi : 10.1016 / j.physletb.2003.10.071 (English).

Web links

Commons : Frau von Huldremose  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• The woman from Huldremose. National Museum of Denmark , accessed November 30, 2011 . 
• Clothing and Hair Styles of the Bog People. In: Bodies of the Bogs. Archaeological Institute of America, accessed November 30, 2011 (English, woman's clothing and a photo of the corpse).